The founder

The beginning

So I guess you came here to know more about me?

It all started in 1992 in a beautiful and typical provencal garden, just below a tremendous full of flowers magnolia tree (picture of the flower above). I was born in a garden, in a small village called Biot in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur which is located in France. I grew up for ten years in this beautiful country before moving to the cold lands of Quebec, in Canada, where I still live today. 😉

If you don’t already know it, my name is Bastien Bournet-Charrier but you’ll probably see me interact with you under the alias “BBC”. I went to Augustin Norbert-Morin high school in the small village of Ste-Adele where I obtained a DES+ (basic courses plus enriched math, physics and chemistry). Then I pursued my studies and graduated at André-Laurendeau college in “Technologie Physique : Nanotechnologies et photoniques” (Physics technology specialized in nanotechnologies and photonics). After three memorable years living in student residences and sharing amazing moments with friends, I moved to a new “real” flat and started a course in Physics Engineering at the Polytechnic of Montreal. I never finished that course. For multiple reasons, I had to stop my road here and reconsider my future. 🙄

Since I had enough capabilities in physics and technology I worked in multiple industries as a technician and research assistant. I worked in white rooms with the most state of the art technologies in fields like optical submarine component tests, terahertz radiation detectors, NASA strain test modules and more.

I always knew that being an employee would never let emancipate myself. I had to start something big and I had to start it now. A lot of ideas crossed my mind but it took some time before I really knew that I was on the good way.

As I wanted to start my own business and I couldn’t afford to buy a whole laboratory to continue in physics and technologies field, I had to reconsider my field of activity. I surprised myself to discover an interest in the financial world : how it functions, how to manage a budget, how to invest, where to invest, how to prepare a retirement, what are the different financial products, their specificities, and a lot more questions that should be mandated in school. Finally, a financial services company approached me with the opportunity to build my own business inside the existing company. I would be coached, trained and followed to assure my success in the field, I could recruit people and build my own team and they would even guarantee my success at the governmental exams (you need a license to work as a financial consultant). It sounded so attractive that I accepted straight ahead (with the support of my father who’d inspected the company for two years before that).

I was coached, trained and followed by amazing people and I recently received my license to formalize my “financial consultant” status. Actually I’m on my way to obtain the mutual funds license to work more on investment and hopefully open my own brokerage. I met a lot of people in this business and I can tell you it’s pretty hard for a 19 years old guy to gain some confidence from an old baby-boomer. People don’t want to hear that they’ve wasted 5, 10 or 20 years of payment in their insurance or that they didn’t managed their finances well and are paying thousands of dollars every month for nothing. They look at me like “Who the ‘eck are you to say you’re smarter than me?”. For some people, it’s a challenge. For me… it pisses me off. 👿

Once again on the road to find what would be the ideal business, I started to look more closely on the opportunity that Internet has to offer today…

The BBC Music

My father is the founder of Harmonieterre, Les entreprises Dominique LeWeb and other small companies. Former photographer and nurser, he’s working in the computer field for more than 20 years now. He used to work as a webmaster but slowly turned into an Internet marketing specialist. Working in collaboration with the most successful Internet marketers (Christian Godefroy, Sebastien le marketeur and Olivier Rolland just to name a few), my father is today a tremendous source of information and definitely a resource I consult every single day.

Why am I talking about my father? Because he’s the one who told me this :

The things that will make you rich are the things you love the most!
What matters is what’s in your head and heart, not in your hand.

I wrote down everything that I liked to do, what makes me happy, etc. On this list was some incredible stuff like be a baker, do bicycle, go on trips, do research for the environmental cause, meet new people, listen to music, create music, share music… and then I stopped.

The BBC Music was born in me.

When I first had that idea I really wasn’t sure how it would go. I wasn’t sure how to do it, I didn’t know where to start, who to talk to or anything. As a matter of fact, I was always looking for new music. My computer holds thousands, thousands, and thousands of songs. Seriously, I never met someone with a bigger music library than me. I was aware of the copyrights laws so I knew I couldn’t just throw all these songs on the Internet and hope something good in results. But having so much music mean one thing : the music I searched everyday was mostly from emerging, unknown artists. Slowly the structure of The BBC Music took its form…

What I was doing everyday for myself became the principal activity of The BBC Music YouTube channel. A lot of people came on the channel to listen to what I had to share and eventually some artists contacted me for promotion. Slowly but surely I reached a point where I have no more time to search for new artists as they are now coming to me. Nevertheless I will continue to dig some artist out from time to time. Now gaining quite a lot of popularity, The BBC Music works hard everyday to bring you the best musical project you’ve ever stumbled upon.

Since then, tons and tons of ideas and suggestions has been discussed to improve this project, to make it bigger and to provide all of you with interesting contents and services. You can read more about The BBC Music project here.